Journey toward understandingASU students, others view Germany's past and presentRANDI BAROCAS
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 Audrey Price (from left), Arik Bergman and David Levy wave Israel flags during a June 14 Israel Independence Day celebration in Berlin. |
More than half a century later, the German government still is grappling with its past. It wants to repair the country's image and let the world know it is a different Germany
The Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany has partnered with the Council for International Educational Exchange and national Hillel, a Jewish student organization, to sponsor Bridge of Understanding, a program that strives to break down the stereotypical notions that many young Jews have about Germans.
Bridge of Understanding takes a select number of Jewish college students to Germany for a three-week educational experience. While there, students travel to various German cities, meet with political leaders and with Jewish and non-Jewish German citizens. And for a portion of the trip, the participants are even placed with mostly non-Jewish home hosts. It's an experience that gives the students the opportunity to talk candidly with Germans whose own ancestors may have played a role in the Holocaust.
This summer marked the fourth year of the program, and two Arizona State University students, as well as Rabbi Barton Lee, executive director of ASU Hillel, attended. In all, five groups from the United States were coordinated for the trip. Each of the three ASU participants were in different groups, traveled separately and had different destinations on their itineraries.
Yet despite the unique schedules each group maintained, both ASU students who attended
"The home stay was actually the nicest part of the whole thing," says Miller, who is working on her Ph.D. in social work. "I was placed in a home by myself, with a married couple who had three children.
"We would sit up and discuss politics and history, American culture versus German culture, and art and music," she continues. "We discussed the Holocaust in terms of (how) they had problems with Holocaust deniers ... and felt that they should go to jail."
Price says she was initially hesitant about the home-stay experience, explaining that it came just days after arriving in Germany and before she had a chance to become acclimated to her surroundings.
"I was still uncomfortable to be around Germans who weren't Jewish. I thought they might have all been Jew-haters and Nazis, and I was afraid to live there. And we were living there for three nights," she says. "But once I arrived (at my home stay), I felt at home. It was a very warm family. They had presents; they cooked every meal for me. They took me all over
"I spent a lot of time talking to them. So this way, I was able to form my own opinions about Germans and break the stereotypes that I've always heard," Price says.
Lee says having the opportunity to form his own impressions about the German people was a valuable experience. He says that prior to being asked to serve as a group leader for this program, he never would have considered traveling to Germany.
"Like many Jews who have studied about the Holocaust, the idea of going to Germany and rubbing shoulders with 'them' was not something that was very high on my agenda," Lee says. "If I had been planning a tour of my own, with my own funds, Germany would not have been a place that I would have stopped."
In hindsight, however, Lee says it was "a fascinating experience."
The rabbi stresses that visiting the country today made real the knowledge that this younger generation of Germans has no responsibility for the Holocaust, and that it is unfair to judge them for what their ancestors did. He also acknowledges Germany's rich culture and beautiful countryside, things he says he was reluctant to admit in the past.
"The only problem, of course, was that in so many places I found myself, one felt the absence of live Jews ... and the presence of so many ghosts," he says. "There were so many wonderful things that we did, but around the corners and the edges, was this tremendous feeling of what had been lost."
A view of the past
Visiting historical sites helped put the past in painful perspective for the ASU participants. Lee's group stood at the very place where Adolf Hitler used to stand to inspect the Nazi troops as they marched through Nuremberg for party demonstrations.
Price's group visited Berlin's Wannsee Konferenz, and walked through the very room where Hitler and his men made the final decision to kill all the Jews in the concentration camps. Miller's group saw the shell-like remains of Buchenwald, one of Germany's most notorious death camps.
"The only day I really had a hard time there was the day we went to Buchenwald," Miller recalls. "I have no burning desire to see death camps. I couldn't take it, and I started crying and had to leave."
Price's group toured the forced-labor camp Sachsenhausen, and she says it "bothered" her that it had been rebuilt and was no longer in its natural state.
Despite some of the demons participants say they faced on the trip, they also saw a lighter, new side to Germany, one that is infused with hope for a stronger Jewish community.
"My most memorable experience was in Berlin. We had a Yom Ha'atzmaut festival celebrating 50 years of Israel," Price says. "By far, this was the best experience of my whole life. (It was) the best Israeli Independence Day I've ever had.
"The parade and the festivities were held in front of the only standing synagogue in East Berlin that survived the Holocaust," she continues. "To be able to celebrate with Jews from all over Europe and Jews from Israel, as well as my group
Lee says such open celebrations of Jewish heritage and tradition have rubbed off on the German community.
"There is a great deal of philo-Semitism
